Buongiorno! Ciao! Grazie! Gelato!

This concludes my study of the Italian language, undertaken during our recent 10-day foray to the land of pasta, wine, and really expensive leather shoes. 

I've got a lot to say about the trip. While any trip to Italy is of course fabulous, this trip was also fraught with landmines - tour buses almost overturning on hairpin turns in Tuscan hills, being trapped on a ferry during a storm with passengers tossing their cookies right and left, lost luggage, misplaced passports, fevers, sickness, and much more. But for all of that, I'd do the trip again in a minute. I fell in love with Italy and the people we traveled there with.

But all that is for a later blog. Today I want to write about the "random" encounters of the trip. (And yes, photos are coming. We just haven't had a chance to go through them yet. Soon, I promise.)